What-Do Wednesday: What I WILL do

Two weeks ago I asked you guys what you would do in my stead, since my horse is kindof a monster. Thank you everyone for your comments. I really appreciate them, and the time you took to read and comment on my plight. After all of your comments, and a long talk with my barn manager, I have a plan.

An adorable Murray video for you. Turn the volume up to appreciate his vocalization.

Murray’s problems are multi-fold. First, as many of you pointed out, it seems like there’s something physically (or physiologically) going on with him, most likely ulcers. Another part of it is that, at times, he being straight up rude. As many of you, and my barn manager, said, there is no excuse for repeatedly running away or rearing or generally being dangerous out in public, especially when it’s clear that Murray can behave appropriately (as evidenced by his behavior after our classes at the show). Associated with this, my handling of these situations is probably not the best it could be, because I’m struggling with trying to do other things (get Murray’s tack on in time to make it to my jumper class, for example).

So, first things first: the probable ulcers. I am quite sure that Murray has had ulcers in the past, he is part of the greatest risk group (race horses), after all. Unfortunately, I’ve never had him scoped, and unless I grab a leprechaun and shake him down, I won’t be scoping Murray any time soon. The evidence that he did have ulcers is that a month of ulcer treatment in the past did him a world of good, and that he was very sensitive in all of the ulcer acupressure spots, if you believe in that kind of thing. Unfortunately, a blogger I respect deeply doesn’t. I don’t follow all of Dr. Ramey’s beliefs on alternative therapies, though, so I’m not too torn up about that.

Okay so that’s step one. Murray will be getting a full month of 1/2 dose omeprazole, and will then be weaned off it over a following 2 weeks. I will then have plenty left to give him when we travel. I will continue to address this problem with maintenance — never riding on an empty stomach, feeding alfalfa especially in the trailer — and look into a long term gut health supplement (which will probably warrant its own whole blog post!)

To address problem number two, that he’s just being rude, will require a little more direct intervention from me. There are three main rude things Murray does: 1) break away from the trailer, 2) constantly back away/run away while girthing, 3) have zero regard for human safety and personal space. Emma linked me to some horsemanship videos that addressed all of these things in basically one video. Of course they weren’t addressed for good, but it was a start.

Murray is smart. It’s true, both wonderfully and irritatingly so. The same smarts that let him learn so quickly that jumps won’t eat him means that he knows — he knows — that if he pulls back hard enough from the trailer something will break (baling twine, break-away tie, or his halter) and he will be free. I really don’t care about his motivations in this regard, whether he’s scared or just wants to run away or simply being an asshole, he needs to learn that, actually, he can’t just break away from the trailer. Furthermore, Murray needs to learn to respect my personal space and the personal space of every human ever. He is far too comfortable entering a person’s space when he’s scared, annoyed, or even just looking for some loving. Enter: ground work.

No carrots here you little shit.

I’m also going to buy myself a blocker ring for travel. This will let Murray pull back, but with any luck I’ll be able to get to him before he breaks free of the ring. I could also tie a knot in the end of his lead, and once he gets to the knot he’ll be stuck. Not sure which is a better idea at this point.

If you have a horse that spooks easily, these ties can really save you from ripping parts off your trailer!

In terms of his girthiness, there’s not much more I can do other than continue as I have been. I will keep working with him at home to change his feelings towards girthing in general, but with any hope, this will the omeprazole improve with the implementation of step three…

So, on to step three! For step three, I need to up my Laying Down The Law game. My barn manager, and I, and some of you, think that it’s high time Murray learned to respect me a little more. The side benefit of this is that respect on the ground will lead to more respect under saddle! BM’s suggestion is to take Murray for a rules-establishing walk as soon as we get to a new place to remind him exactly what the situation is.

This is okay with your friends. Not with me.

This would include reprimanding him for poor behavior as well as rewarding him for good. (You can’t go all-punishment on Murray, he starts to shut down.) I have needed to set some firmer rules with Murray for a long time. I’m more than capable of doing it with strange horses and other peoples’ horses, but somehow (huh, nobody else experiences this problem at all, I’m sure) I struggle with it a lot when it comes to Murray. These firmer rules will be in place at home as well as away from home, this means no more wandering around while we’re grooming, no more pawing (and definitely no more pawing on MY FOOT like he did yesterday), and no more threatening, or even thinking of threatening, to bite. Ever.

So there it is. My plan. Should I probably have known to do these things before? Yes. Am I an imperfect human? Yeah. Will I struggle to keep up with steps two and three? Probably. But try we shall!

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21 thoughts on “What-Do Wednesday: What I WILL do”

This sounds like a GREAT plan – addressing his physical discomfort AND bad attitude! Did not know about the biting.. yikes! NOT OKAY! Stay strong and know that making his world a living hell for a couple minutes will make the rest of his life – and yours – much happier and safer. 🙂 I think the rope halter will also blow his mind a little bit, very interested to see how he reacts to that! GOOD LUCK! We’re all here to support you!

Get it girl. You’ve got a great plan going forward. My mare pulled back for awhile so I had recruited the cowboy side of my fam and they told me something like this might help. http://www.naturalhorsetraining.com/trainingtips30.html I didn’t need to go this far as we resolved the issue pretty quickly, but maybe something to look into?

That study is interesting, although it leaves me with more questions than it answers. There’s some details left out that IMO are really important to know. Good luck with everything! I always liked those blocker tie rings until my mare figured out how well she could pull back with one… then I had a much bigger problem on my hands. Damn mares and their smarts.

They are interesting — more horses with improvement/healing (though no stats on this) for the two lower doses than for the high dose (prescription dose). Sounds like it sucks to be a horse with glandular ulcers — looks like nothing is healing those suckers. There are so many other analyses I would have done if I’d been in charge of this paper…

woo hoo – you can totally do it! sometimes it just takes getting really really mad once before we get motivated to make serious changes lol. i like your points about staying positive with rewards too – esp as my mare definitely does her best learning when i *remove* pressure. anyways good luck!

I admire the fact that you’re ready to really enforce the rules. I know, for me, I struggle to be the enforcer because ti has to be *constant*. You can’t let the horse get away with anything (especially with the smart ones!). It just takes a lot of energy and vigilance to be always on like that, and that’s hard!

I think your plan is solid! One thing though – that ulcer study you mentioned is for one specific medication. While the results are really encouraging, it’s not a direct comparison to UG or even the compounded stuff. I did a LOT of reading up about ulcer treatments last week, so this is fresh on my mind.

I’m going to have to disagree with you there. The study addressed doses of 1.0, 2.0, or 4.0 mg/kg omeprazole, which is the active ingredient in UG, GG, and the compounded drugs you can get for ulcers. While there’s definitely evidence that compounded drugs might not be as stable as FDA approved formulas, the active ingredient must be the same. So I think that it really does directly compare to UG, which is something like dosed at 4 mg/kg.